Standard Cancer Drugs Do Little to Help those Suffering with Mesothelioma, However Genetic Therapy Could Provide a Promising Alternative
Oncologists decide what course of treatment to prescribe to their patient. There are numerous options. There are no standard treatment course for mesothelioma cancer victims. Mesotheliomas lack of agreed-upon treatment is due to low a treatment success rate, rareness, a high mortality rate and a small number of studies providing meaningful stats.
The prospects for mesothelioma patients have been grim, but doctors have recently made progress. Traditional treatments for cancer are surgery (removing the tumor and surrounding tissue), chemotherapy (poisoning cancerous cells) and radiation (killing cancer cells with radiation) There are problems with all three. Patients with mesothelioma have not responded well to traditional radiation therapy. Researchers are looking for ways of aiming radiation directly at the tumor in hopes that this will result in less damage to healthy tissue.
Surgery removes the mesothelial tissue around the tumor. The surgery is difficult and challenging, with unknown effects or benefits to patients. Common chemotherapy drugs that work on other types of cancer usually do not work on mesothelioma, and different combinations of chemotherapy drugs have been tried without a lot of success. Like radiation, researchers are focusing their work on controlling the physical location of the treatment with an emphasis on the pleural cavity.
The death rate for mesothelioma is so high that many of even the most sophisticated techniques in cancer treatment are tried out on patients. These include biologic therapy such as the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs such as thalidomide. The new drug pemetrexed (brand name Alimta) has shown good results in extending life with mesotheliomas..
Oncologists consider the stage of mesothelioma, the location of the tumor, the patient’s age and state of health at the time. Theres also photodynamic therapy and gene therapy ” two far-out new ways of attacking cancer. Patients afflicted with mesothelioma are benefitting in these clinical trials.
